Me: “I’m sorry, I have to follow our usual procedure of sending all POAs to Legal.”

Customer: “How long will that take?!”

(I’m confused, as he’s opened several of these with me and has never been bothered about it before.)

Me: “Since it’s still early, probably by the end of the day. Maybe by tomorrow, but I don’t think it will take that long.”

Customer:*hands over the paperwork* “It had better not! The wire’s coming in tomorrow. My new client’s counting on this! I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” *walks out*

(I review the paperwork and spot all sorts of spelling and grammatical errors. I have a bad feeling about this, so I call Legal. They have me scan and email the doc over right away. When they call me back…)

Legal: “Well, congratulations. You found a fraudulent POA!”

Me: “Great.”

(The customer comes back in not ten minutes later.)

Customer: “Where is my account?”

Me: “I talked to our Legal team, and it seems that this POA is fraudulent. Where did this come from?”

Customer:*explodes* “NO, IT’S NOT! This is as real as it gets! This lady emailed me and said she wants to make me POA over five million dollars!”

Me: “Is this one of your regular clients?”

Customer: “No! She emailed me just a couple of days ago. She’s going to wire the funds as soon as I can open an account!”

Me: “I’m sorry, [Customer], but it looks like someone’s trying to scam you. If you’d like to speak to our Legal team—“

Customer: “I AM SWITCHING BANKS!” *stomps out*

(He came back the next day to complain to my boss. I’d just finished giving my boss the whole story from the day before, so when she told him the same thing I did, he stormed out again, screaming at us. A couple of hours later, his secretary came in, apologized, and said that she would review his emails from now on.)